Taking People With You: Leading Through Change

This page brings together the resources shared as part of our session at the AIM Conference 2026.

The session focused on the reality of leading people through change – not how it looks on paper, but how it actually plays out in organisations, teams and partnerships.

Across Cumbria Museum Consortium, we work in very different contexts: from a small rural museum to a large city-centre site, and across multiple venues in some of the Lake District’s busiest locations. While those settings vary, many of the underlying challenges are familiar – financial pressure, changing audiences, stretched teams, and the need to keep moving forward even when things feel uncertain.

What came through clearly in the session is that change is rarely neat or linear. Some change is planned, some isn’t – but in every case, it lands with people first. It affects relationships, morale and culture, often all at once. Leading through that means holding complexity, making decisions without full agreement, and staying open to challenge along the way.

The resources below reflect some of the approaches, tools and networks that we’ve found genuinely useful in navigating that. They’re not a checklist or a definitive answer – but we hope they offer something practical to take away and adapt in your own context.

If you’d like to continue the conversation, or share your own reflections, please do get in touch.

10th June 2026: We’ll be adding more resources over the coming days, so stay tuned.